Two-way Progress

Almost at the end of the month and my word count had reached 67000. By the end of the month I should have managed 70,000. But thereby hangs a dilemma: I’m making such good progress that there’s a danger I might go over my projected target of 100,000. It might seem silly to say that, but my publisher usually wants between 60 – 100 thousand words. That would mean either a rejection or a suggestion that the novel be cut. Like most writers, having penned all those words over a long period and then re-edited, the last thing I want is to have to cut again. Stephen King said that the second draft should be the first draft minus 10%. It might be tongue in cheek advice, but could be necessary nonetheless. I know where I’m heading with this book and have resolved one or two sticky problems that I have to face — well, that my characters have to face — and I can see that I’m in danger of over-running. I could look at it like a football manager who says he’s happy to have too many good players to choose from; he’d rather that than not have enough players. I’m also looking at a way of improving my promotion methods. It’s all a bit crazy at the moment, but I see positive movement in my rankings followed by drops, then a surge again, and I realise that I am not keeping my eye on the ball. I currently have three of my titles outperforming the others (seven with AB.c), but only two of them have been promoted very recently. The third was promoted over four weeks ago, so maybe that’s a knock-on effect. I would like to think that readers like my work and download my other titles. I am also picking up moderate reviews (17 to date) bringing me an average for one title of four stars; this is for a title that hasn’t been promoted for a while. So I am going to devise a plan (like Baldrick in Black Adder, I have a cunning plan) that tells me which titles to promote, where and when. Oh, and how much to spend! One thing I have admitted too is that I don’t have much of a clue when it comes to promoting myself, but there’s nothing like stumbling along to help climb the learning curve. One of my colleagues on Acclaimed Books (Peter Lihou) has marketing in his blood and seems to be doing quite well with his titles. But budgets come into it as well, and I try to stick to a percentage of my royalty income which at the moment is quite small. But I have to remember that this is a hobby and as much as I would like to make a huge success of it, I won’t break the bank trying. Besides, there are more important things in life. Wish me luck!